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Working Outside

Let this be an indicator of our winter. After a busy morning, we all had a free afternoon. Instead of sitting around watching nothing on TV, I was itching to get outside and do some work on the yard. I’ve never liked the set up of the sprinkler box in the backyard; the box itself was too small, too low, and the control valves inside were old and didn’t work that great. Plus, they were wired using speaker wire.

When we finished our basement, I ran new sprinkler wire to the exterior of the house but I never got around to hooking it up last summer. In fact, all watering I did on my lawn was done manually (I physically opened up solenoids on the sprinkler valves in the box). Manually watering the lawn is actually great for water usage because I’m a lot more in tune with my lawn and the water it gets when I do it this way. Often, people who rely completely on the timer box in their basement water their lawns while it’s raining … or the day after it rained an inch … or. Having said that, I’m ready to hook it all back up and use a timer box because I would like to water the lawn at times of the day when I’m not usually awake (read: 6am).

That was a long explanation to say, “I went outside and started digging out the old sprinkler box and a trench to run my new line. Whew. For heaven’s sake, why couldn’t I say that at the beginning? It was about 45 degrees today and the ground was prime for digging. After removing the mulch and weed fabric, the ground came right up with our shovels. I say “our” because my girls couldn’t resist an opportunity to get outside and work with me. Good gals! We dug the 12 foot long trench and a few feet deep hole around the box. I’ll probably wait to do the rest when spring comes around for real.

This bed is about 12 feet wide. Next step is to dig from the other side of the fence (where the new sprinkler wire is).